The Collector [with video]

Can you picture a time when our town didn’t have a wine bar on every corner? Paul Gaston can.

“When we first came [to Charlottesville],” says the emeritus UVA history professor, “we would go to a reception at the home of the chairman of the department, and the only thing served would be Bourbon and Scotch, and maybe martinis. You wouldn’t have found a bottle of wine."

Since he arrived here in 1957 to teach Southern history, Gaston’s involvement with the local Civil Rights Movement has been justly celebrated: helping to coordinate Martin Luther King’s 1963 visit; getting beaten up and arrested at a local sit-in; working to reopen the public schools during Massive Resistance; writing the 1970 classic, The New South Creed; being honored by the NAACP; and more. At 80, he is still politically active, holding fundraisers for local democrats like Al Weed (where Gaston pours generous quantities of wine). One of the most important aspects of his life, however, has yet to be documented.

Paul Gaston giving a tour of his wine cellar.

“In the early ’60s,” he says, “a student wrote a profile on me for one of the student magazines, and after it came out I remarked to the editor that his reporter didn’t have the searching curiosity that I would expect in a good reporter. He said, ‘What do you mean?’ I said, ‘Well, he never found out that one of my favorite hobbies is collecting and drinking wine.’”

“Growing up in southern Alabama,” Gaston says, “there were Scuppernong [grapes], which I plucked from my aunt’s grape arbor when I mowed the lawn. I had never had a glass of wine, red, white, rosé or any other color, until I went to college.”In the early 1950s, newly married, Gaston traveled to Europe and fell in love with French wine. Returning stateside, he tried unsuccessfully to find those same wines in Charlottesville.

“There was no place to buy wine here. Foods of All Nations had a few wines, but there were no wine stores.”

But at Central Liquors in Washington, D.C., Gaston found some of the same wines he’d drunk in France selling for 79 cents a bottle. Thrilled, he bought several and showed them to a neighbor who knew a little bit more about wine. The neighbor handed him an article by wine writer Alexis Lichine. “It blew my mind,” Gaston said.

The expenses of raising children led Paul Gaston to stop collecting wine during the ’70s, “but then in 1983 I said, ‘Well hell, I’m only going to go around once, and I might as well start collecting again.’”

And so a wine collector was born. “Within a couple of years I had maybe 30 bottles. …I got a little bit obnoxious about the subject of wine. I used to talk to people at the table when they would come to dinner, and tell them about the wine, what the chateau was, and what its peculiarities were. I had red marks on my shin from my wife kicking me.”

Gaston’s cellar peaked at about 800 bottles; these days it’s a bit less. “I always thought it was ironic,” his daughter Chinta told me, “that someone who grew up in modest circumstances in Alabama and is such a populist would be such a wine connoisseur.” But to visit Gaston in his wine cellar is to see a man in the place where he’s perhaps most happy (“Whenever I can’t find Paul,” his wife says, “I look down in the cellar”).

“I’ve had a lot of memorable wines,” he says, “but some stand out. I remember once when Mary was away…I cooked up a hamburger on the grill outside—it was summertime—and onions, and maybe just a little bit of garlic, and I drank a bottle of a premier cru Volnay. I still remember the taste of that Volnay.

“I’ve drunk great wines since then…and if I was to taste any of those again I would say, ‘Oh, I know you.’”

“How often should I bathe my cat?” I’m asked with surprising frequency. It’s a perfectly valid question, but anybody who’s ever bathed a cat will understand that it usually answers itself the moment you dare to try. I remember my first job at a veterinary hospital in high school. My inaugural

It looks a lot like a spa or massage parlor upon first glance. Relaxing is something I’m not especially skilled at unless a beach-side bar is involved, but when I entered the AquaFloat lobby with its soft, aquamarine-and-sand-colored decor, sounds of nature playing in the background and

Caturra’s meow What started out as a Richmond coffee shop in 2006 has since evolved into a full-service restaurant with a new location on the Corner. Café Caturra, a coffee shop-restaurant-bar combo that serves breakfast, lunch and dinner is officially open for business in the old Toro’s Tacos

Thousands of visitors come to Virginia every year to tour the Blue Ridge Parkway and Skyline Drive. As they soak in the natural beauty where the two meet off Interstate 64 at Rockfish Gap, with views stretching out across the Shenandoah Valley, they soak in something else less appealing,

It’s been a big year for Keswick Hall, and it’s only February. Within weeks, the inn announced its five-star rating from Forbes Travel Guide, and also welcomed a new executive chef to Fossett’s Restaurant. “The hard work really starts now, in keeping it,” marketing director Janet Kurtz said of

Feast mode Feast! on West Main had its most profitable year ever in 2014, and the specialty foods market and cafe is looking to keep its momentum in 2015, recently announcing a high-profile hire and new weekly sandwich concept. Co-owner Eric Gertner said Feast! has grown every year since

Sultan Kebab isn’t new. Deniz Dikmen and Serhat Peker, both natives of Turkey, opened the restaurant tucked away in a small shopping center at the corner of Route 29 and Rio Road in 2012. But if you’re like me and don’t often schlep up to that side of town, it’s easy to miss. But partially […]

Valentine’s day’s a real bitch. Whether you’re coupled or single, the holiday is an annual emotional landmine that can send you to the dog house or into a shame spiral so deep that even a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Salted Caramel Core ice cream can’t pull you from it. Fortunately for you, we’ve

Opah! What’s the difference between cooking for royalty and cooking for the masses? According to Paul Boukourakis, not much. In addition to opening restaurants on three different continents, the 77-year-old native of Greece cooked for the royal family before arriving in Charlottesville and

In Charlottesville, a meal at Petit Pois is as close as it gets to eating in France. My dinner companion told me so. And, he should know. Jose de Brito, acclaimed chef at The Alley Light, was raised in France and his passion for French cuisine can produce strong views on the subject. What is

‘Wild ideas’ Faced with a terminal illness, most people might hunker down for months of treatment and forgo future plans. Not Mark Weber. Last summer, in the middle of an intensive treatment regimen for a malignant brain tumor, Weber bought Woolly Mammoth, the two-story restaurant at the corner

As you age, maintaining your health becomes more and more like a game of Whac-A-Mole: Exit the footloose and fancy-free 20s and suddenly you’re worried about your reproductive health and abnormal sleep patterns. Get past menopause and then it’s time to concentrate on the threat of high blood

Life was so simple when there was only one beer festival. Top of the Hops descended on the Pavilion in the fall, you put on your pretzel necklace and tried a bunch of good craft beer you’d never had before. Your liver had 364 days to recover. Then came Know Good Beer (KGB), first held […]

Sweet and savory We’re about to get a new pie shop on the Downtown Mall. And in true Charlottesville fashion, for the academic-turned-pastry-chef behind The Pie Chest, it was a circuitous path that led her here. The ever-changing food scene in this island-of-misfit-toys of a town seems to bring

Got a new store It hasn’t been a good stretch for frozen yogurt joints. First Cups in the Barracks Road shopping center went tits up, now Berry Berry on the Corner is getting a makeover. Fortunately the demise of Berry Berry comes with very very good news. The place turns out to be owned by

Ryan Hubbard and Mark Marshall aren’t trying to reinvent the wheel. The two guys behind Red Hub Food Co., a catering service that recently opened a lunch counter at its 202 10th Street NW location, are serving up classic North Carolina-style barbecue, plain and simple. For them it’s not about

Hello, Lampo For a pizza place that turns out pies in a matter of minutes, we sure had to wait a long time for Lampo, the real deal Neapolitan joint that opened on Monticello Road last month. Loren Mendosa, Ian Redshaw, Mitchell Beerens and Andrew Cole promised a fall opening, and the fellas

Sure, we’ve got Coke versus Pepsi, Yankees versus Red Sox, and Apple versus Android. But do any of these really hold a candle to the age-old rivalry between cats and dogs? If their depiction in pop culture is any indication, they’ve been squaring off since the dawn of time. I’m always a bit

Look, we get it. Cracking open that 2015 calendar gives rise to all manner of inspiration—get fit for bathing suit season! Read more books to shine in idle party chit-chat! Bone up on your ballroom skills before your cousin’s autumn wedding! Then suddenly it’s February and, not only have your